Death Angel- Chapter One
by LisaReneeJones
Summary: One day, she's a criminal attorney struggling to run a successful practice. The next, she's the apocalypse. From there, well, things pretty much go downhill. Now, I'm experiencing inexplicable visions. I'm unprepared for the changes about to come into my life. The secrets that will be unearthed. And the responsibility and power that will be thrust upon me.


The Past...2012

Chapter One

My name is Amber Brown, jokingly known by some as the "Grim Reaper" and deliverer of Armageddon. So when I woke up this morning to Derek's text message begging me to stay home from work and "save the world", I wasn't surprised. It was, after all, December 21, 2012 and my twenty-seventh birthday. The day he'd long teased me that I, and I alone, would somehow cause the End of Times.

Phone in hand, still nestled under my blue down comforter, I grimaced at the text screen, never too groggy to give as well as I got. "Don't mess with an attorney in the midst of trial and in full battle mode," I murmured and punched a few keys to type a reply, "Armageddon came and went with our first and only date."

A satisfied smile touched my lips at the reference I knew would get his boxers twisted in knots. He was, after all, the hottest Assistant District Attorney in the entire state with an ego to match. My smile faded the instant I glanced at the clock on my mahogany nightstand, noting the early hour of six am.

Outraged, I quickly put my finger to work again: "If you wake a girl up early on her birthday, it should be for great sex or a Starbucks White Mocha." Not that sex was on the table with Derek. That date I'd mentioned had really, truly been a disaster. Sometimes being friends without bedroom benefits was the way to go.

I sighed and threw off the comforter, knowing I was never going to go back to sleep. Not when I was pretty darn certain the biggest case of my career was going to verdict in a few short hours.

My cell began to ring. "Forget it, Derek," I said, and I tossed the phone on the bed. I was not about to stroke his wounded ego. That would blow the entire point of my text version of Armageddon.

Thirty minutes later, I was showered and dressed in my lucky black suit I'd gotten when I'd graduated from the University of Texas law school four years before. I then twisted my long hair into a conservative knot at the nape of my neck. Conservative to the extreme, that was me, and with good reason. I learned a long time ago to present myself in ways that would disinvite the blonde bimbo jokes that had haunted my legal career. I might look like my former high school beauty queen mother, minus her height–-I was a good five inches shorter than her at my five-feet-four inches - but I was no man's token arm candy like she was. Though I admit, sometimes, in a good legal brawl, being underestimated plays in my favor. So do my oddly pale blue eyes that tend to momentarily stun people when I get up close and personal during a cross examination. Another sign, per Derek, that I was otherworldly, and thus the Armageddon. I snorted at that ridiculous idea and finished getting ready. Barely after eight, I decided that since it was my birthday, and I was feeling lucky, I would take my work to a Starbucks near the courthouse, on the gamble that my verdict was on its way. And sure enough, birthday luck paid off. I'd been sitting down for no more than fifteen minutes when the courthouse called. Verdict time had arrived.

With a second extra hot White Mocha for the road in hand, and bundled up like an Eskimo, I exited the coffee shop. We Texans don't like the cold December days, and the heater in my piece-of-junk, ten-year-old Camry wasn't working. Alas though, apartment living and broken heaters were a small price to pay to open my own practice, rather than working for my father's fancy, high-powered firm where money and power, not people, mattered.

I was about to climb back into my chill mobile, when a large truck pulling a SpongeBob float turned the corner and stopped right behind my car. As in, stopped, and didn't move.

"End of Times parade," said one of the Starbucks employees who was standing by the curb, smoking.

"You have got to be kidding me," I said, aghast at the idea that such a parade existed, let alone that it would include a SpongeBob float. Not that I had anything against SpongeBob, per se, but he was blocking my car and the Trucker was now getting out of the cab.

I marched forward, meeting him by his door as he hit ground level. "Excuse me," I said, "but I need to get out."

"Sorry, ma'am," the man said, tipping back his cowboy hat. "But the truck is running hot. My employer said park, so I parked."

I gaped. "You can't leave me stuck here with a giant Sponge Bob blocking my car. I have to get to work."

He grinned. "Not like anyone is going to be around to get mad at you. Today's the Armageddon."

Three-inch heels were not made for walking, especially not eight blocks. At least, the frustration of that walk did a good job of biting away at my nerves over the trial outcome, but my feet got a working over as well.

Now, finally the moment of truth had arrived. I stood in a criminal court full of observers, with cameras and reporters aplenty. To my right was my client, Jeremy Wright, a meek, gentle schoolteacher, with mousy brown short hair, who I had believed, to my core, was falsely accused of killing six women — the fall guy for a District Attorney up for re-election. Derek's evil co-worker, an assistant DA and snake named Devon Row, smiled snidely at me from behind the prosecutor's table. I gave him a cold stare and short incline of my head, hoping he was about to eat some crow for dinner tonight.

All formality complete, the Jury Foreman prepared to read the verdict in what would be the conclusion of my client's sixth, and final, trial for the same crimes against different victims. Tension curled in my stomach and in the air of the courtroom as we waited for the elderly black man to speak. "On the count of Murder in the First, we find the defendant"—that would be my client—"not guilty. On the count of Criminal Sexual Assault, we find the defendant, not guilty."

The courtroom erupted into murmurs, shouts, and general chaos. Suddenly though, I was removed from it all, in a bubble where time seemed to stop — later, I would realize my life had irrevocably changed forever.

There was this odd prickling at the back of my neck, and the hair stood up on my arms. I sucked in a breath, as icy cold, a blast of sub-zero chill, ripped down my spine. At the same instant, my client closed his hand around mine. It was a firm touch—a solid handshake that did something beyond the simple touch.

Pain splintered down my scalp, and black and white spots exploded in my mind before images appeared. Horrible, vivid images. Women. Women clawing for their lives, fighting off an attacker. One woman, and then another. And another. Their faces contorted in pain, desperation.

Information flew through my brain with lightning speed, like a reel of a movie in fast-forward – names of places, people, hair color and length, street signs – so much, too much, not enough. No. Too much. Way too much. I couldn't bear it. Make it stop. In some dim recess of my mind, I fought the urge to fall to my knees. I struggled to escape, like the women in my mind, to get away from … him.

But I couldn't get away. I saw their bloodied, naked, damaged bodies, so similar to those in the photos from the trial, but different. These were not those women, but others, women who had yet to be discovered, I knew – though I had no idea how. And Lord help me, I felt their attacker's pleasure as he hurt them, his pleasure in seeing their blood, in feeling their pain… in his power to take a life. And their attacker, their murderer, was Jeremy Walker - my client who wasn't innocent at all, if I was to believe what my mind had somehow shown me.

In rejection of what I'd seen and felt, I silently screamed and jerked my hand from his grasp. A flash blasted behind my eyes and the room came back into focus, the sounds of the crowd, the sight of him. Jeremy stood above me, towered above me. I'd never noticed how tall and big he was, until now. But then he wasn't slumped forward in his normal fashion, nor were his eyes downturned. He stood tall, his gaze locked on my face, and I saw something in his expression, something hard and knowing etched in his uncharacteristically stark features. As if he were aware of what I'd seen, as if he had made me see it – see them. A wave of malice rolled off of him and into me, so real, so alive, I stumbled with the impact. And then it was gone, as was the Jeremy of seconds before. He slumped, and his gaze fluttering downward. But it was too late. Either I was crazy or I'd just seen a killer.

I lost the next few minutes in the crush of bodies, in the urging of my staff members to head for the door. I was wrapped in a blur of movement, a haze of images that took me over again, torturing me with replay. Images my mind refused to let me extinguish. I didn't know what to do and my head was too full of gore and pain and death to wrap itself around options.

I began to focus on the present somewhere near the front door of the building, suddenly becoming aware that, not only was Jeremy directly beside me, I was actually thinking, calculating what to do next. At some point, I had even made the decision to keep him close to me. He couldn't get away. It was the first clear thought I had. The next was the certainty that I didn't know how to fix what I was so sure I'd done wrong by defending him.

That was until Jeremy's shoulder brushed mine and the images flooded my mind again, a quick, violent rush of graphic horror that threatened to put me flat on my backside. Those same images kept me standing though, reminding me of the reasons I had to keep moving, the victims to vindicate. The bitter coppery taste of blood bled into my taste buds as I wobbled on unsteady legs through the crush of people at the double exit doors. I'd bitten my cheek, I realized, but I really didn't care. I didn't feel any pain anymore than I tasted my own blood. But I felt their pain, tasted their blood – that of Jeremy's victims, of the women he'd slaughtered.

I stepped into the beaming Texas sunlight, the orange glow piecing my eyes, delivering presence of mind. Resolve to act expanded within me, to make what I'd done wrong, right. I didn't know how yet, anymore than it was logical to think some strange vision I'd seen from touching someone was reality. In my heart and soul, I knew it was, and that I had to figure out what to do about it and quickly. I didn't question my newly found revelations of Jeremy from my visions when it was my nature, my job, to question, to analyze, to seek what lies lurked in the shadows disguised as truths. I'd seen the truth behind the fiction that Jeremy had made me and everyone in that courtroom believe already. No. That I'd made everyone believe because I'd wrongly defended him. Anyone else who died was on me. I let this madman go free to kill again.

Several of my staff members urged me towards the press podium, where a crowd of at least fifty bystanders, families, and friends of the victims, waited on me to speak. There was no way I was going to step to that microphone and proclaim a victory despite knowing the DA's office expected me to. Jeremy turned to me and though he appeared to be the slumped over, mousy, innocent victim of an introverted man I'd defended, I only saw a killer.

"Monster!" a male voice screamed.

My attention swung to my left, to the place the shout had come from and I found myself staring at a machine gun pointed directly at me, or rather at Jeremy. Suddenly keeping him close didn't seem as bright an idea as a few minutes, or even seconds, before.

My gaze lifted to the distorted face of the man holding the weapon at the same moment he vehemently repeated his shout of, "Monster!" and every instinct I owned said he was pulling the trigger.

I flung myself down on the concrete as the discharge of the weapon rang out into the air. The impact rattled my teeth and scraped my bare legs. I blinked, survival instincts telling me to focus and located imminent danger but I never had the chance. To my horror, Jeremy came down on top of me, his body cradling mine, the force cracking my forehead against the pavement. Black and white spots exploded in front of my ears in a blast of pain that waved into a playback of the murders Jeremy had committed. Someone's blood-curdling screams vibrated through my body. I was shaking, my heart racing too fast, my spine so hot I was sure it was on fire, I was on fire. And the screaming – it just wouldn't stop. Screaming. Screaming. The women in my visions were screaming. I was screaming.


End file.
